| John Hopkins on Tue, 30 Jan 2018 14:59:06 +0100 (CET) |
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| Re: <nettime> Zach Blas: Metric Mysticism |
Yet what if one were to gaze not into a crystal ball but rather a chunk of silicon? Not transparent glass but rather an opaque, geologic material at the very core of digital technology.
*Window Weather* http://neoscenes.net/blog/archives/75283 for a brief history of silicon dioxide, glass:
All organisms, humans included, evolve ways of modulating and attenuating the changing flows that are potentially harmful to them. Humans are exceptionally well-adapted to utilize and re-configure available flows to secure incrementally increased viability. In one instance they discovered that they could manipulate the most common forms of energized matter at the surface of the earth — silicon and oxygen, with bits of carbon, sodium, and calcium — to create a substance that was, at human scales, relatively impervious and that could constrict extant or generated flows in a variety of ways.
Subsequent to its discovery, glass performed a set of functions that would fundamentally alter the energetic relationship of humans with their environment. It also significantly altered social relation and the flows of energy within the burgeoning techno-social system (TSS). Even before human fabrication of glass, the sourcing of flint, chert, obsidian, and other forms of knappable lithics [1] was a primary influence on population location and clan/tribal viability. Without the enormous advantage conferred via the tools and weapons produced from these substances, life in the Paleolithic was severely compromised.
The precise origin of the initial human fabrication of glass is unknown, but was likely an accidental occurrence somewhere in Mesopotamia around 3500 BCE. Its utility as a robust and immutable container was eventually established and the technology for its production was widely spread during Roman times. Its use was largely restricted to a decorative substitute for precious stones outside of western Eurasia until the mid-18th century. Between the 14th and 18th centuries, the Venetians created a sophisticated production regime that raised the technological level substantially to include reflective (silvered) mirrors, complex vessels, and lenses.
The use of glass in windows -— existing in Roman times but stagnating like many technologies after the collapse of the Empire -— developed substantially between 1100 and 1600. It is this particular use that surfaced when I was living in Reykjavik, Iceland in the 1990s:
There is a word in Icelandic “gluggaveðri” that translates literally as “window weather.” This suggests a kind of weather where it is much more comfortable sitting on the inside of the window than on the outside. Windows came to Iceland early, but glass was a premium commodity, so the half-underground sod huts of early Iceland might have only one 15 x 15 cm window set in a wooden door at one end of the hut. Better to be watching out this window than experiencing the full-bodied wrath of a winter storm, a rök [2], a storm with the power to remove life from the body. By putting the sheet of silicon dioxide between the body and the storm, a sort of virtual world appeared -― one that could be seen but not felt. Toasty, steamy warm inside with the sheep and ponies, death-dealing blizzard outside.
Anthropologist, Alan MacFarlane, tracing the history of glass forward beyond decorative and limited household uses, suggests that without glass there would never have been a scientific revolution in the Western world. The use of glass in a wide variety of (transparent) containers made possible a range of fundamental experimental situations in evolving scientific endeavor. The results of those experiments over time increased the precision by which humans then controlled flows around themselves. This control liberated even more energy for innovation. This, by definition, led to more optimized living, leading to more efficient use of available energy flows, subsequently ‘liberating’ extra energy to drive a cycle of knowledge propagation and further innovation.
However, the spread of the use of glass was contingent on the stable availability of fuels for the very energy-intensive manufacturing process. That proceess needs sustained temperatures above 600°C — almost as high as some worked metals. It also depends on a clean and controlled production environment and on sourcing the relatively pure silicon dioxide (usually in the form of clean sand) and the other chemical ingredients. Historically, the necessary high-temperature fires or furnaces consumed tremendous amounts of wood and charcoal. Only a techno-social system (TSS) that had an excess of these energy sources, initially in the form of forests, was well-situated to produce glass. Europe, after the Middle Ages, had optimal conditions for both the stable accumulation of knowledge and the energy (re-)sources to drive an innovation cycle.
The production of lenses and mirrors was intertwined with contemporaneous developments in optics, geometry, and perspective. It was optics that moved the TSS firmly into the mediated — where ‘real’ simulations of what was ‘out there’ could be presented or re-presented on 2-dimensional surfaces. Photography, as a further convergence of early chemistry (utilizing glass containers extensively) and optics, made these virtual re-creations ubiquitous. Winding still further forward in time, we come to incandescent Light bulbs that overcame the limitations of darkness; other evacuated glass tubes including the cathode ray tube made possible both radio and television. Radio was completely dependent on the principle of thermionic emissions which, via glass vacuum tubes or valves, formed the electrical circuits of early amplifiers.
These glass tubes were subsequently replaced by solid-state devices, most of which were constructed on amorphous silicon substrates, the same primary element in glass. Every single digital device has — as a crucial and absolutely irreplaceable element — an integrated circuit whose primary material is the amorphous silicon substrate that the circuitry sits upon. It is no coincidence that we speak of complex cumulative protocols such as Microsoft Windows as a window on the world: one looked ‘through’ that we might see what is ‘outside’ without actually venturing out into the rök.
In view of where we have come from and where we have arrived in relation to this particular form of energized matter, it is no coincidence that our deep dependence on silicon dioxide is a means to attenuate the threatening flows that surround us. It also forms our relation to all frequencies of Light: energy that is crucial to Life. This is not to say that the dependencies on glass were any more important than, say, on the development of efficient delivery of energy in the form of agriculture, animal husbandry, charcoal, coal, oil (whale and others), and electricity. These flows are not separable from each other. They are all deeply intertwined where we find ourselves in the present moment, and also, who we are: we are always affected by altered and changing flows.
A singular conclusion of this short look at glass (through a pair of glasses on a glass screen!) brings me to define the “virtual” as being the situation where one is experiencing an attenuation of energy flows (via some ‘blocking’ or ‘diverting’ technology) that otherwise would be impinging directly on the body-system. This suggests that any discussion of the virtual not be limited to material ‘delivery’ mechanisms or mediatory (digital!) devices. Rather, a broad consideration of the character of flows between the Self and the Other, the Self and the cosmos, is needed: especially the relation between those flows and embodied sensory presence. The dialectic of reality/virtuality is fundamentally about the ‘allowance’ or attenuation of potential energy flows as they effect change in the energized body.
—–[1] Knapping is the process of impacting two stones (liths) together to chip one into a usable tool or weapon—arrowhead, scraper, ax head, etc. The stones most employed in this process were of microcrystalline silicon dioxide, that is, naturally occurring glass.
[2] Icelandic, as in Ragnarök, the apocalyptic battle of Norsk mythology as laid out in Icelander Snorri Sturlsson’s “Prose Edda” where the earth is submerged in the ocean, to arise, transformed, and re-populated.
-- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Dr. John Hopkins, BSc, MFA, PhD hanging on to the Laramide Orogeny twitter: @neoscenes http://tech-no-mad.net/blog/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nettime@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: